


Bled in Ruin

by avianscribe



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Assisted Suicide, Bigotry & Prejudice, Blood, Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Canon Major Character Death, Character Turned Into Vampire, Discrimination, Gen, Hurt Prompto Argentum, Serious Injuries, Suicidal Thoughts, Vampires, World of Ruin (Final Fantasy), World of Ruin Big Bang (Final Fantasy XV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:20:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29537433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avianscribe/pseuds/avianscribe
Summary: Prompto encounters a vampire with his face, and it turns his whole world upside down. In the mess afterward, he discovers that Besithia's clones inherited a side effect that puts Prompto and everyone he knows at risk. But can he learn to live with it -- and how will he survive long enough to help Noctis bring back the Dawn?
Relationships: Gladiolus Amicitia & Prompto Argentum & Ignis Scientia
Comments: 42
Kudos: 27
Collections: World of Ruin Big Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for the World of Ruin Big Bang! The M rating is for violence and blood and vampire-related awfulness, plus suicidal ideation and assisted suicide. Mind the tags! 
> 
> Many thanks to my awesome artist, zoebittnerart; check them out on Twitter [@zoebittnerart](https://twitter.com/zoebittnerart) and on instagram [@zoebittnerart](https://www.instagram.com/zoebittnerart/)!

Prompto noticed something was up, but he wouldn’t make the connection for a long time -- because it started with something he’d experienced his whole life.

It was an egg, this time, that splattered against Prompto’s shoulder and dripped eggy goo down his arm into the bandana around his bicep. The egg was followed by a shrill voice yelling from an alleyway. 

“Damn dirty Niff! We don’t want your Niflheim Scourge here; go back to where you came from!” 

The ‘Niflheim Scourge’ thing was new.

Iris made a small offended noise, and would have gone after them, but Prompto grabbed her arm. She’d grown some, but she was still smaller than her brother by a long shot. “Ignore ‘em,” Prompto said. “They might have buddies back there.”

She made a frustrated growl in her throat, but bounced after him. “Pay no attention to them, Prompto,” Iris said. “They’re ignorant and have no idea what they’re talking about.”

She didn’t have to say that, but it was nice to hear, all the same.

* * *

Some days later, he heard it again. This time, an old crone in the street pointed at him, face pale and lips trembling. “Niflheim Scourge!” she screeched. 

Prompto was with Dave Auburnbrie this time, and Dave scowled at her. “Don’t know where _you_ came from, but Argentum here is a trusted Hunter and one of the King’s own. ‘Sides, we’re all being run through the wringer. We don’t truck with talkin’ smack about anyone here, regardless of where they’re from.”

It was more of a speech than Prompto expected from Dave. The woman didn’t stop watching fearfully, like she fully expected Prompto to commit some kind of crime any moment; but she scuttled away, especially when Dave took a couple slow steps in her direction. 

Prompto just gaped, more than a little dumbfounded. 

“What does she mean, ‘Niflheim Scourge’?” he asked at last. 

“Don’t listen to that falderal,” Dave said, then put a hand on Prompto’s shoulder and walked away, pulling him along. 

“You’ve heard that before,” Prompto said.

Dave made a “humph” sound that wasn’t a no.

Well, Prompto knew that Dave responded to patience. He followed Dave in silence, and before they reached the armory, their intended destination, Dave finally said, “There’s been reports.” 

He was silent for a few more steps before Prompto nudged again. “Reports?”

“Attacks,” Dave said. “They seem random… and attack victims have been ending up with the Scourge. Or dead.”

Prompto’s heart clenched. “The attacker?”

Dave’s face darkened. “Now, don’t go taking this the wrong way, but… the reports are all the same. Always a single stranger, always the same description.”

Prompto clenched his teeth. “It’s a Niff, isn’t it?”

Dave looked shocked. “Well, I…”

“Blonde hair, blue eyes, freckles… It’s a Niff, and that’s all they can see.” 

Dave pursed his lips, and Prompto didn’t need any more confirmation. He stalked off, leaving Dave behind. 

Prompto had heard enough of this when he was growing up; he didn’t fit in then, and as soon as someone dangerous out there looked like him, it was going to be the same all over again. No matter that they were all just hanging on by a thread, trying to survive till Noctis could come back and save them all.

They could broadcast all the good messages they wanted, about no borders, and “we’re all in this together”... Niflheim was still not-well-loved. Prompto had to watch his back, just like always.

Except it was weird… Sure, there were plenty of people who had no problem randomly acting out against anyone who fit the Niff mould. But now that he was paying attention, Prompto noticed a difference between the purely xenophobic and a subset that had actually _seen_ the so-called Niflheim Scourge. That group was less bigotted and more… unsettling. 

Instead of yelling slurs at him when they saw him, they’d do a double-take and scuttle away from him. Like they were afraid of _him specifically._ They weren’t just raving about Niffs; they were honestly terrified. Of _him._

The implications of that… 

_… rows upon rows of tanks; with bodies floating in them, wearing his face…_

Prompto couldn’t think too hard about that without his nightmares getting worse. But he wasn’t about to take it all sitting still. Still, he didn’t want to have to hurt anyone, either -- even in self-defense. It would be better for all concerned to make himself scarce. 

So that’s what he decided to do.

* * *

It wasn’t like he needed to check in with anyone. Ignis was busy enough, interrupting him didn’t feel right. And who knew where Gladio was? He was always going hither and yon and Prompto never could figure out what he was up to. Hadn’t seen him in weeks.

They weren’t as close as they used to be. 

They _might_ care if Prompto hared off somewhere, but it didn’t matter… If he stayed, Prompto couldn’t ask them to be his personal bodyguards to stave off randos blowing off steam at him. That wouldn’t be fair. And if he told either of them he was leaving, he’d have to tell them why.

So Prompto didn’t say anything to them; he just checked in with Cor, at his tiny office near the defensive walls. 

“Gonna be gone awhile,” he said.

From his cluttered desk, Cor eyed him. Prompto could see the cogs working; the Immortal wasn’t a dummy. Prompto kept his face as neutral as possible, but he knew he wore his emotions on his face, and Cor could probably read him like a book. 

Cor didn’t say anything, except “Take care of yourself out there.” 

Prompto nodded, not trusting his voice. Then he grabbed his duffle carrying his meager belongings and headed for the gate.

Being on his own would be okay. Better, even. Out on his own, he wouldn’t disturb his neighbors when he woke up screaming from his nightmares of Zegnautus Keep.

Iris intercepted him on the way.

Prompto hadn’t counted on seeing her. She would want to help him, and Prompto didn’t want to ask for help from someone barely out of teenhood. 

“Where’re you going?” she asked, worried. 

Prompto waved a hand noncommittally. “Nowhere. Anywhere but here.” He knew he wasn’t being his usual cheerful self, but at this point he didn’t care. Iris bounced after him, asking questions laced with worry, but she didn’t stop him. He had to give her that.

They reached the gate. A pair of hunters were stationed there, with a truck. “Can anybody drop me off at Mynbrum Haven?” Prompto asked. 

One of the hunters nodded. “You got a mark?” 

“I’ll be looking for one on the way,” he said. “Gonna station myself out there to help anyone who comes by.” 

They looked uncertain, then. Prompto wasn’t sure what more he could say to convince them, but then one of them shrugged and the other climbed into the driver’s seat. The truck’s engine rumbled to a start, and they slowly rolled out to wait for him just outside the wall.

Iris shuffled her feet, clearly not knowing how to convince him to stay (she couldn’t) and probably trying to decide whether or not she could physically stop him (she couldn’t). “Stay in touch,” she said at last.

Prompto made a noncommittal noise, and strode out the gate.

* * *

#### Two Months Later

It was late, but Prompto had long since given up falling asleep when his phone buzzed with a text notification.

He sat up with a groan and reached for his phone, where it was attached to his precious portable charger. He had no idea who could possibly want to get in touch with him at _this_ obscene hour of the night… or _morning_ , he decided, after blinking to focus his eyes on his phone. 

Ignis.

Because of _course_ it was Ignis. Ignis was always the one who checked in on him. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that… though it was nice to know _someone_ cared. 

**Iggy [2:39am]** >> Are you in Cleigne now?  
 **Iggy [2:40am]** >> We’ve received a report I’d like you to look into, if you are.

Prompto sighed. He wondered if Ignis was aware of what time it was; without his sight, he had a tendency to work until he dropped from exhaustion. The Ebony shortage hadn’t helped. It’s almost like Ignis had taken Noct’s disappearance into the Crystal as a personal failure, and worked harder now as penance. Prompto had tried to talk him out of it, without success.

Like he was one to talk.

 **Prompto [2:42am] >> ** Yeah, I’m in Cleigne  
 **Prompto [2:42am] >>** you know what time it is?

 **Iggy [2:43am] >>** Apologies  
 **Iggy [2:43am] >>** I figured you would still be awake. 

Well. He wasn’t wrong. Since Zegnautus, Prompto hardly ever slept. And when he did, it wasn’t restful.

 **Iggy [2:44am] >>** I also thought you might be willing to help with an investigation, if you were already in the area.   
**Iggy [2:45am] >> **The Hunters and Glaives have other matters they’re dealing with, and Gladio has been occupied with other things right now. 

Honestly, tracking down a problem for the hunters would be better than hanging out at a haven in the dark by himself. 

**Prompto [2:45am] >>** Send me the deets

 **Ignis [2:46am] >>** Incoming

In a few minutes, Ignis had sent an email with the scant info the Hunters had gleaned -- mostly reports of a solitary daemon lurking in the lowland farms -- and Prompto was packing up his paltry camp to head out. Action was better than sleepless nights, daemons or not. 

Prompto moved quickly through the deteriorating undergrowth. Three years of declining light had wrought its effects on the shrubs, leaving them desiccated and bare. In another lifetime, Prompto might have spared a moment to feel bad about it. Right now, it just seemed like par for the course. Everything was crumbling around him.

Had been, for some time. 

Prompto didn’t blame Noct. He didn’t. He’d made a promise. “Ever at your side,” he’d said, and he meant it. He _still_ meant it.

But it didn’t keep him from waking at night, shaking from dreams that made him relive his days in Zegnautus, or from dreams of Noctis rushing towards him with a sword. Noct’s anger haunted Prompto -- and even knowing now that it was Ardyn’s fault didn’t banish the ache in his chest. He’d had weeks to think about it, hanging from that torture tree in Zegnautus. 

And then he’d had mere hours to resolve things with Noctis before the Crystal had swallowed him alive.

It wasn’t enough time to let everything go.

With his dark thoughts haunting him, Prompto made quick time to the abandoned farm in the Hunters’ report. 

Whoever had farmed here had tried to keep things going, even with the growing darkness and the daemons. It hadn’t lasted. The tilling machine sat abandoned mid-field, in the middle of a long furrow smoothed and packed down with age. It looked a couple years old, at least. 

Prompto glanced towards the cozy-looking house overlooking the fields. He wasn’t going to check it out; not this time. He’d had his fill of hastily-abandoned homes with food still rotting on the counters and the smell of decay permeating everything. Instead, he paced around the periphery of the field, looking for signs. There was little enough. There were scrapes that looked like wild animals had been there, scavenging along the edges of the field. There was a scarp mid-field that looked like the work of a Red Giant, but Prompto didn’t bother to investigate closer. He kept his eyes peeled for movement, but everything was still.

Prompto found a likely-looking spot to set up camp in -- a flat spot near the fields, between a couple trees. Since there wasn’t a haven nearby, or even an outpost or anything, he’d need to fend for himself. He set up a little generator with some portable daemon-repelling lamps and pitched camp.

Then he just had to wait.

Waiting was boring. He didn’t even have King’s Knight to keep him company anymore; the game servers had long been disabled or repurposed. Having nothing to do gave him too much time to think. To remember. 

_“How long do you think they’ll leave you here? I’ll be good company for you.”_ Ardyn’s voice oozed through his mind like an oil slick. 

Prompto shuddered. 

Ardyn was still out there, he knew. Some days Prompto was afraid Ardyn would get bored of whatever he was doing, wherever (Ignis thought he was keeping vigil over the Crystal, wherever _that_ was…) and would come find him again. Memories of Zegnautus clung to Prompto’s mind like a vile residue. 

He kept taking these solitary hunts in part to prove to himself that he _could._

A rustle in the brush somewhere interrupted his thoughts, and Prompto straightened. He pulled his pistols from the Armiger and gave them a quick safety check, and sent them back… then he stood and stepped out of the circle of the daemon lights. Without the glare in his eyes, the shadows came into focus.

There.

On the edge of the field, a stumbling figure. And it was headed this way. 

Prompto snapped his body lamp on, summoned his guns to hand again, and started across the field. It was a good distance out, and Prompto made quite a bit of progress out into the field before whatever-it-was noticed him and started his way. The silhouette was a stringy figure, pretty much human-shaped, with a shaggy head and gangly limbs and it was all still in shadow, but on the off-chance that it was a person, Prompto stopped in his tracks. 

“Hey there,” he said. “Everything all right?”

The figure didn’t say anything for a moment; didn’t even move. Prompto heard a low moan that sounded all-too-human. 

He should know better than to approach even a human-looking figure out here in the wilds, in the dark. His body lamp didn’t shed enough light to illuminate it, to see if whatever-it-was had traces of Starscourge on its skin, but something in that moan made him walk forward. In the flashes of light that caught the figure, Prompto had brief impressions of pale skin, tattered clothes, and a shock of yellow hair. 

Human, then. No daemon looked like _that._ Niflheimr? More and more refugees were making their way to Lestallum, with harrowing stories of their journey across the ocean to reach safety. 

“You okay?”

Prompto was almost close enough to touch the guy, and reached out, ready to take whoever-it-was by the arm when the person lifted his head --

And Prompto found himself staring at his own face. 

Prompto froze. And now his light illuminated the whole figure, and Prompto could see the shredded bodysuit, hanging in tatters off an emaciated-looking form; the shaggy hair that looked like its last cut had been really close to the scalp, but hadn’t had a trim in a few weeks.

A flash of bodies floating in green-tinged tanks. 

This wasn’t just a Niflheimr; this was a clone. 

A clone, but its eyes gleamed red in the lamplight, and its skin was too pale. Pale and unfreckled, like it hadn’t seen the sun. Except where the skin was a mottled red, almost like it had the Scourge. Prompto tensed, fear a tightening knot in his chest.. 

The clone moaned again. Then Prompto miscalculated. 

In the clone’s physical state, Prompto hadn’t expected it to move so quickly. But it lunged, and grasped at him, and hit his chest and then they were both falling -- and then Prompto was on his back, grappling with it, and it hissed, its lips peeled back from unnaturally sharp teeth.

“What--!” Prompto exclaimed, but then strained to push it away from him. But the clone was _strong;_ stronger than his starved-looking frame suggested. 

Prompto couldn’t fight it off; before he knew it, the clone lunged again and pain exploded in Prompto’s neck, where its teeth sank in. He shrieked and kicked out at the clone, but it was latched on tight -- and… that weird rush… the thing was…

It was drinking his blood! 

“Nngh! Get off!” Prompto shrieked, and kicked again to dislodge the thing. 

That might have been a mistake; the clone’s teeth ripped at his neck when his kick pushed it off, and hot blood trickled down his neck. The thing’s eyes glowed red in the light, like an MT’s but not. 

It charged at him again, and something was wrong with Prompto’s reaction speed, because he didn’t get his arms up in time to push the thing away and it latched onto his neck again. He scrambled backward, grasping at its hair with trembling fingers, but its hair was cropped too short for him to get a good enough grip; he pushed at its face, but that just pulled at his neck more. 

He gave a last strong push that ripped the thing away from his neck -- but now he felt woozy. Seeing the gore running down the thing’s chin made his stomach twist, and for a moment he thought he was going to barf. He scrambled at his belt for his hunting knife and ripped it from its sheath. He lashed out. The blade scored the thing across the forehead. It shrieked, and threw its head back, and its blood splattered over Prompto’s face.

It lunged into him, knocking them both to the ground. It landed heavily on top of him, and drove the wind from his lungs. In the moments it took for him to recover, the thing drank more. As soon as he could move, he shifted the knife in his hand and thrust it up, under the thing’s ribcage. 

It released its bite on his neck and made a horrifying gurgle. It pushed itself up, looming over him. its face a mask of pain and fear, and Prompto could see its arms trembling. Then blood surged from its lips onto Prompto’s face, pouring over his open mouth. He gagged and spat, but then the thing collapsed on top of him, landing heavily on his chest.

Prompto gasped and struggled, but it didn’t move again. It was a dead weight holding him down, and he pushed at it but his arms had no strength. He tasted copper, and gave one final shove, and the clone rolled off of him at last. 

Prompto just lay there for a long time, bathed in gore, trying to control his breathing. His heart pounded so hard that it hurt. For some time, he couldn’t make his legs move, or his arms. There was no way he’d make it back to the haven on his own. He inched his hand into his pocket for his phone. It slipped in his blood-slick fingers, but he finally managed to pull it out. His hand trembled so much that opening the emergency app to send a distress ping took way longer than it should have -- not that he had any hope that anyone would be near enough out here to get it. 

His vision went grey-tinged at the edges, and not even panic at the thought of daemons finding him like this was enough for him to keep from slipping into darkness. 

Then something in his core twisted with pain -- pain that flared in his belly and lanced through his veins, burning him from the inside. His last memory before he blacked out was screaming.


	2. Chapter 2

_ Bring him in here…  _

_ Careful; mind his head…  _

_ Where did you find him?  _

_ Out in the boonies… lucky I was in range to get the ping… _

_ What happened to…  _

_ Can’t tell…  _

_ … no major injuries that I…  _

_ Cold…  _

_ … ’s still breathing… _

_ … get him warmed up…  _

_ Grab some blankets…  _

Prompto came to awareness slowly, and couldn’t make sense of the voices murmuring around him. He couldn’t move his limbs. He wanted to tell the hunters not to worry about him -- not to waste their resources on a Niff experiment. He wanted to tell them that he’d weather it; he’d be all right. But he couldn’t move. 

His muscles felt frozen; and more than that, the fire on the inside was still burning him alive. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t even think, the pain was all encompassing. He thought he felt hands on him, but he wasn’t sure. And he certainly couldn’t tell anyone how much pain he was in.

He must have made some kind of noise, because the voices around him gained an intensity. They were speaking  _ to _ him, rather than  _ over  _ him, but still he couldn’t answer; his throat was tight and strangled any noise he tried to make.

He faded again.

Static noise overtook the world for some time, erasing everything, before it finally faded. Prompto realized the pain was dying away. He was left instead with a gnawing hunger. His skin prickled all over, and it took a moment for him to realize that he was wrapped up tight in a number of blankets. He vaguely remembered a voice over him saying that he was cold. He wasn’t, particularly… He wasn’t warm, either. But the blankets were  _ very snug _ and the wool prickled against his bare arms. 

His eyes fluttered open, and he stared at the canvas ceiling of a haven tent. Whoever had found him had dragged him here. He shifted in the blanket, feeling sticky. He was still in his hunter’s fatigues, gritty and stiff with dried fluids. His rescuers had cleaned the worst of the gore from him, but there weren’t showers out here; there wasn’t a way to really get him clean.

He’s glad they didn’t really try.

Orange light illuminated the canvas top of the tent -- the only kind of sunlight that managed to break through the atmosphere anymore. It was all the daylight they could expect.

Prompto pushed himself up and looked around the tent. It was empty. Most havens were largely abandoned during the day, when Glaives and hunters would be out and about on their missions. Prompto suspected that whoever found him would be back at some point, but… he wasn’t sure he wanted to be here when they got back. 

He was just glad they hadn’t done anything to him while he was unconscious.

His gear and boots were neatly set at the foot of his cot, just waiting for him to be awake again.

… He was starving.

A table in the corner held a stack of MREs and other trail foods. Prompto raided it, shoving three MREs into his pack and snagging a package of Garula jerky. He wouldn’t turn his nose up at food. He wondered vaguely which haven this was, as he pulled out a fist-sized slice of jerky and strode out of the tent into the meager sunlight--

\-- and yelped with pain, as soon as the sun hit his skin. He scrambled back under the canopy and shook his arm, hissing. A red patch had already formed on his skin. “What the--?” He stretched out his hand into the sunlight, and drew it back immediately, and could have sworn he heard a hiss; saw a wisp of smoke. “What IS this!” 

Bewildered and in pain, he inspected the -- that was a  _ burn! _ The sun had  _ burned _ him! But there wasn’t enough sunlight to burn  _ anybody; _ three years of declining light, and even  _ he  _ was losing his freckles. 

But he couldn’t deny the evidence; the sun was burning him. He retreated into the shade of the canopy and sat heavily on the cot. How was he supposed to get  _ anywhere _ if he couldn’t be out in the sunlight? He took a bite of jerky and chewed thoughtfully while he tried to tamp down his growing panic and consider his options.

He’d barely swallowed when his belly lurched, and he scrambled to the edge of the haven -- ignoring the pain of the sun on his skin -- to retch over the side. When he was finished, he clutched the stone and took several deep, shaky breaths. 

That was… concerning. 

He scrambled back to the shade of the canopy, out of the burning sunlight. He looked at the jerky in his hand. Had it turned bad? He swallowed several times, trying to sense if he was going to throw up again, but it seemed to have subsided. 

And good thing, too. He looked around the abandoned haven. Whoever had brought him here hadn’t stuck around; they must have had some mark or other to get to, and as much as Prompto would have liked to have some idea of the time or what had happened to him… he really didn’t think he wanted to stick around and explain to someone that he couldn’t go out because the sun would burn him. 

He gauged the distance between the haven and the first line of trees. He thought he’d have a pretty straight shot to Lestallum from here, if he kept to the trees, or only traveled at night.

At night… with the daemons. He didn’t really relish that thought, either.

But it was that, or travel with someone else, and knowing his luck, he’d fall in with some Niff hater anyway and wouldn’t even make it to Lestallum. 

He checked his phone. The battery was nearly dead, but he didn’t really want to stick around long enough to plug it into the haven’s generator. He double-checked his gear, hoping the hunters had recovered everything from his campsite. 

No portable charger. He must have lost his in the fight with the clone. Prompto cursed.

The emergency ping had likely saved his life, but he’d have to get by. He turned the phone off and jammed it into his pocket, grabbed his other meager belongings, took a deep breath… and headed out into the wilds.

* * *

The first bit was torture. Literally. 

Anytime the sun so much as glanced at his skin, he could swear he saw tendrils of smoke rising from his skin, leaving a bold red welt behind that only faded when he found shade. He finally gave up on traveling during the sunlit hours -- which was pretty easy to do, actually, because there just wasn’t much sunlight to be had. 

Once in the shade, the burns actually healed. And that wasn’t terrifying at all.

The panic of traveling during daemon hours was rough, but, well. It’s not like he hadn’t dealt with that before.

The worst thing was the food. 

He tried every bit of the food he’d grabbed. The jerky was a complete no-go; he vomited as soon as he swallowed any of it. The MREs weren’t much better. He tried every bit of it, and none of it appealed at all. Trail mix was a no. Even the canned nutrition shakes, which were supposed to be gentle on an ailing stomach… He couldn’t keep anything down.

And he was  _ starving. _

How he could be starving when he was puking up his guts with every bite of food he tried, he had no idea and he just wanted it to stop.

Then he found the Glaive.

* * *

He’d been traveling in Lestallum’s general direction for nearly three days, when he came upon the aftermath of a fight. 

It was bad. And Prompto could smell it before he saw it, which he thought was a little weird. It was salty and tangy and utterly, absolutely the most delicious thing he’d smelled all day, and as soon as he caught the scent he found his feet steering him towards it. 

The earth was scorched in a wide circle, like someone had taken a flamethrower to it. Whatever daemon had made this, he had no idea… and didn’t really want to find out. In the darkness, it wouldn’t be long. 

He didn’t even have to search long before he found the poor soul. He walked right to him, as though drawn.

Maybe he  _ was _ drawn... by the scent.

It was clearly a Glaive, wearing a tattered coat and everything; and maybe the scorched earth was this guy’s work, because these guys had access to the king’s magic, after all. Whatever he’d fought was gone, just a smudge of goo on the ground. The Glaive, however… 

He had wounds all over his arms and legs, soaking his fatigues through with blood, but the worst seemed to be a deep gash in his belly. He was conscious still, taking in stuttering breaths, and Prompto couldn’t imagine the amount of pain he must be in -- but for some reason Prompto was having difficulty thinking clearly, because the hot, coppery smell of blood was…

Was so, so delicious. 

Like that one time Ignis had made them all this peppery daggerquill rice thing. It had been so good, and Prompto had been drooling for it as soon as he’d entered Noct’s apartment, just like he was drooling now, and something in Prompto’s mind was screaming, knowing that this was so, so wrong. 

“Help… me…” the Glaive said, and Prompto knelt at his side. The Glaive grasped his hand, squeezed it, exhaled, and closed his eyes. 

His skin was pale and his lips were turning blue-ish. Things weren’t looking good for him. And Prompto didn’t have any potions on him. Even if he had, one potion wasn’t going to fix  _ this. _

But the man’s heart was still beating, though it was slowing… Prompto could see the pulse throbbing in his neck, which was far closer than it should be, because Prompto was leaning over the poor man. Prompto licked his lips. He opened his mouth.

What was he doing, what was he doing, what was he  _ doing?? _

Inside he was shrieking. Outside, he was trembling. He needed… he needed… 

He blacked out.

* * *

When he became aware again, he was walking. Walking in the dark, and he could hear daemons hissing in the distance, and he knew he should be nervous about that, but something else drew his attention away from the danger. His hands were coated in sticky blood, and from the tacky feeling of his face and neck, it was on more than his hands. 

He wasn’t sure where he was. He was nowhere near the Glaive anymore. That he could see anything at all in this darkness surprised him and just made it all the more surreal. He shuddered.

He wasn’t hungry anymore, but he couldn’t help feeling as though he had a way bigger problem now -- and he wasn’t quite sure what it was. 

… He had to get to Lestallum. Maybe Gladio would know. Maybe Ignis could help. 

Prompto kept moving, kept putting one foot in front of the other, knowing that if he stopped, he might not be able to motivate himself to move again, and he really needed to move. Now that he wasn’t hungry anymore, he found that he was able to move far more quickly than he expected. He made a stop at the first stream he found to wash the gore off his front -- and he wasn't thinking about how it could possibly have gotten there. Not one bit. 

He wasn't really sure where he was or how to get back to Lestallum, and he pulled out his phone to find out… 

And then the hiss of a goblin made him jump. He froze, his heart pounding in his throat.

The goblin emerged from the sparse scrub, ambling and unconcerned. The creature wasn’t alarmed at him, didn’t attack him, didn’t even seem to notice him -- until he stepped back and his heel caught and snapped a little twig. The thing peered at him -- then moved on, as if he was nothing. 

That… wasn’t normal. Daemons didn’t do that. They didn’t ignore living things. Nothing that wasn’t another daemon.

It passed pretty close to him, and he couldn’t help a whimper.

At the sound, the goblin looked straight at him. 

And turned away.

Like it hadn’t seen a person standing right there. 

Prompto let out the breath he’d been holding and scrambled to his feet. This was wrong.  _ This was so wrong.  _ He took off running into the forest. 


	3. Chapter 3

“And no one has seen him since?” Ignis asked, desperately reining in the anxiety that he knew would color his voice. 

“No sir,” the hunter at the other end of the line said. “He left without a trace. Far as we can tell, he grabbed enough MREs for two or three days, and just headed out in the wilds.” 

“It’s been two  _ weeks. _ ” 

“Well… I suppose we could find someone to send out to… look for his tags for you.” 

Said that bluntly, Ignis couldn’t suppress a wince. There couldn’t be any denying it, though. As competent and resilient as he knew Prompto was, the chances of him being alive -- with no sighting of him for two weeks, and no contact by phone -- were very slim.

“Thank you for the offer,” he managed. “I… hesitate to resort to that just yet, but I shall discuss it with my colleague before we call for a wider search.” 

“As you say,” the hunter said, and disconnected. 

Ignis lowered the phone from his ear and sighed, a shuddering sound. Truth be told, they could ill afford to send any skilled hunters or former Glaives for something so… trivial… as tag retrieval. All their resources should be focused on necessities for survival. If they… if they were to… retrieve… what remained of Prompto, they would have to attend to it themselves.

Even that was more than they should probably do.

“Dial Gladio,” Ignis said. His voice was just steady enough for the phone to recognize the command. 

Three rings, and then Gladio’s voice: “Hey Iggy. What news?”

Ignis almost couldn’t say anything. “Gladio,” he finally managed, shakily. “He’s…” He couldn’t say more, but it was enough.

“I’ll be right there,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

As though he was likely to move, with his heart weighing him down like this. He had just enough presence of mind to brew some coffee. He poured himself a mug, and then he took a chair at his little dining table and sipped at it. 

Ignis’s mug was empty by the time Gladio arrived. The Shield knocked on the door a couple times, then let himself in. Ignis heard the creak of the leather of Gladio’s jacket and the scrape of chair feet on the kitchen’s linoleum floor as Gladio sat down. “Well?” Gladio said.

“The hunters found him,” Ignis said. 

Gladio grunted. “I’d say that was good news, if I couldn’t see your face,” he said. “So what’s wrong?”

“They found him,” Ignis said. “He was covered in blood but had no injuries.” 

He heard Gladio shift. “No injuries is good, though, right?”

“They kept him in an infirmary at one of the havens deep in Cleigne for days, and he didn’t wake for them, just thrashed and moaned in his sleep. Then they came back after a hunt one day and he was just gone.”

“Well, that’s not terribly unusual, is it? The hunters have too much to do to stay put. So they found him, he recovered, and he’s on his way home.”

“Gladio… that was two weeks ago. No one seems to have seen him since.” 

From the silence, Gladio was frozen still. “He should have been here by now,” he said at last. “Should have checked in with  _ someone.” _

“Indeed,” Ignis said. 

A thump startled Ignis — Gladio’s fist hitting the table, he thought, especially with how his breath grew harsh and unsteady.

“They… offered to send someone to look for his tags.”

“Like hell,” Gladio said. “If anyone’s gonna look for `im, it’s—”

Ignis’s door slammed open, and stumbling footsteps shuffled against the floor. Ignis opened his mouth to demand an explanation but Gladio yelled “Prompto!” And then there was a loud thump as someone fell hard. Gladio’s chair scraped against the floor and his feet pounded across the linoleum as he rushed to help.

“Did you say…” Ignis stammered.

“It’s Prompto,” Gladio said, his voice angled from below, as though he was kneeling on the floor. “He… doesn’t look too good.”

“Carry him to the bed,” Ignis said, getting to his feet. “Is he wounded?” 

“No,” Gladio said, with some effort, as he stood, probably lifting Prompto as he did. “At least, it doesn’t really look like it. But… there’s definitely something wrong here.” 

Ignis followed Gladio to the bedroom, and after Gladio had laid Prompto on the bed, Ignis felt for Prompto’s arm. He patted up to Prompto’s shoulder, and then felt his forehead with his palm. Prompto’s skin was icy. “He’s frozen,” Ignis said with shock. “There are extra blankets in my closet, if you please…”

He felt the brush of air as Gladio dropped the stack of blankets on the bed near his elbow, and Ignis immediately grabbed the top one and unfolded it to spread over Prompto. 

“He’s pale, too,” Gladio said. “Like, paler than usual. And there’s…” Ignis heard the shift of Gladio’s leather jacket, as though he were leaning forward. “Ignis, he’s-- There’s, like, blood all over his clothes. Looks like he cleaned himself up some, but not well.” 

Ignis froze. 

He’d sent Prompto looking for the Niflheim Scourge, suspecting that Prompto might be able to glean more about it than anyone else. Prompto hadn’t detailed everything about his experiences in Niflheim, but had hinted at the Magitek Production Facility and some of the horrors he’d seen there, and Ignis could put two and two together. He’d had access to the reports. 

And he’d heard the eyewitness accounts of the Niflheim Scourge from everyone he could get to talk about it. Every description was the same -- and he’d ventured to borrow a print of one of Prompto’s selfies; Iris had been glad to provide, though puzzled, since Ignis couldn’t look at it himself. Every victim he’d spoken to had confirmed that Prompto’s face was very nearly identical to the monster they’d encountered.

But he’d sent Prompto on that hunt without telling him what he was really looking for. Prompto was skittish about anything having to do with his origins. Ignis had feared that if Prompto knew the nature of the investigation, he wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with it. Perhaps that had been a mistake. Especially knowing what he knew now. 

“If my suspicions about the Niflheim Scourge are true,” he murmured, “I think Prompto is in very deep trouble.” 

Gladio grunted, and Ignis could only imagine the scowl he was likely making. “What kind of trouble?” he said. 

“Check his teeth for me,” Ignis said.

“You can’t be serious.” 

It was Ignis’s turn to scowl; a mere pursing of his lips, but close enough to a scowl for him. “I only wish I wasn’t.” 

There was a moment of silence, and then Gladio swore. “Iggy, he’s—” 

“What do you see?” 

Gladio made a disgusted sound. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d— Iggy, he looks like—”

“A vampire?” 

“How’d you guess?” 

Ignis couldn’t help a sigh. He sat heavily on the bed, near Prompto’s knees. “It tracks with some of the information I’ve managed to uncover,” he said. 

Prompto made a slight noise—a breathy moan. 

Ignis stilled, waiting for some sign of Prompto returning to consciousness, but Prompto made no other sound. Gladio confirmed it with a short “Still out.”

Ignis sighed again. Back to the subject at hand. “I wouldn’t have believed it myself, if not for the evidence, but…” He trailed off, unsure of how to proceed.

“Spill it,” Gladio said. 

Ignis took a deep breath. “If you recall what Prompto told us of his origins…”

A creaking of leather, and Ignis imagined Gladio clenching his fists. “Yeah,” Gladio growled. 

“There have been… encounters… documented with the Hunters,” Ignis said. “Every report is the same. The subject is always blonde with a slight build and ragged clothing; the subject’s eyes glow red in the dark; and the subject seems unconcerned about daemons. In most of the reports, the victim reports being attacked after offering to help.”

Gladio grunted. “I’d been hearing people talking about this Niflheim Scourge thing but I’d just waved it off as your standard run-of-the-mill bigotry.” 

“Prompto was being threatened by some of the refugees who came in.”

“Wasn’t that why he split?”

“Indeed,” Ignis said, and couldn’t help the distaste in his voice. “After he left Lestallum, I interviewed the refugees personally, to investigate what drove Prompto to leave. What I discovered…” He sighed again, and shook his head. “There were several who’d had close encounters with this ‘Niflheim Scourge’ and every one of them told me that Prompto could have been their attacker’s twin.”

“Clones,” Gladio growled. 

“It certainly explains why he’s been a target,” Ignis said, clenching his fist on his knee. “I took liberty to review the audio journals of Verstael Besithia, that Prompto recovered from the Magitek Research Facility. It was… enlightening, to say the least. There was a note in one of the logs about a severe adverse reaction in some of his subjects to premature exposure to daemon plasmodia. According to Besithia, the subjects’ bodies began rejecting their usual nutrient regimen, and they grew violent, attacking the other subjects and feeding on their blood.” Ignis couldn’t help the curl of his lip. The whole concept was exceptionally distasteful, and the fact that Prompto had barely escaped Besithia’s labs with his life (twice) was painful.

Gladio sighed this time. “So they turned into vampires, I guess,” he said.

“That’s certainly what it appears to be.”

“Then Prompto must have…”

“My guess is that he was exposed somehow to the Scourge, in a way that infected him and caused this adverse reaction.” He was still a moment, and then said, “Are you sure he has no injuries?”

“Nothing that I can see.” 

“Scars? Anything at all?” 

There was a shift of fabric, as Ignis presumed Gladio leaned in to investigate closer. “There’s some new marks on his throat, but they look long healed.” 

“I wonder…” Ignis said, with a finger at his chin. “I guess there’s nothing for it… We’ll just have to wait for him to wake again. I only hope we can help him.” Then they both settled in for what Ignis feared might be a long vigil.


	4. Chapter 4

Prompto woke up ravenous.

His mouth felt pasty and dry, and every part of him ached with hunger. And he could smell something nearby that could… possibly… be delicious, but he wasn’t sure. And that made him think about the  _ last _ thing he’d found delicious. He shoved the thought away. Deep down, where he wouldn’t have to face it.

He must have made some noise, because someone moved in the room. “You with us?” 

Gladio.

Prompto tried to pry his eyes open and was only partly successful. He groaned. 

Gladio chuckled. “That kind of sounds like a yes,” he said, and his voice was mixed humor and something else. 

Then a shadow leaned over him, and Prompto blinked up into Gladio’s scruffy face. 

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Blondie,” Gladio said. 

“Indeed,” said Ignis, and Prompto glanced over to see him hovering somewhere near the bedroom door.

“Hey, guys,” Prompto managed, shaky and hoarse. 

“Looks like you’ve got a story to tell,” Gladio said, and sat at the foot of the bed. The springs groaned under his weight.

Now they were  _ both  _ looking at Prompto, and he had to explain, and… how was he supposed to explain what he’d become? What he’d  _ done? _

At least… what he  _ thought _ he’d done. 

“You wouldn’t believe it,” Prompto managed, and his voice sounded too high, too tight. Too panicked. 

“Try us,” Gladio said.

And so Prompto did. 

He told about the hunt Ignis had sent him on. He neatly avoided describing the clone -- no need to bother with that -- but he definitely described how it attacked him and chewed him up. He glossed over the pain, and just talked about waking up in a Haven. And grabbing food for his journey back to Lestallum. And the fact that he threw it all up when he tried to eat. 

He didn’t miss when Gladio glanced at Ignis, or when Ignis inclined his head, as though he would have done the same. 

“Have you eaten anything at all since you woke up in the Haven?” Ignis asked.

Prompto couldn’t help the high-pitched manic laugh that erupted from him at that question.  _ Had he eaten? _ Yeah, he’d  _ tried. _ And the only thing he could keep down… was… 

“Guys, I’m… I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He sounded so vulnerable and he hated it.

He was pretty sure Gladio and Ignis would have shared another look, if Ignis weren’t blind. Prompto couldn’t shake the impression that these two knew something. The tension bled into the air.

Ignis broke it first. “Prompto,” he said, his voice so terribly (hatefully) gentle. “I think I made a grave mistake, and I fear you will bear the consequences of it, and… I must apologize.”

“Apologize?” Prompto laughed. “Dude, I really--”

“Prompto,” Ignis interrupted, “ _ I _ sent you on that hunt on purpose. I was looking into reports of the Niflheim Scourge, and I forwarded that mission to you, hoping you might learn something useful about it. I had no idea I was sending you into such danger.”

“The… you… what?” 

Then Ignis explained. 

By the end, Prompto’s mouth was hanging open, and his heart had dropped far enough it was probably keeping his colon company. “You… you mean to say I… I _really am a_ _vampire?”_ He hated the way he shrieked the last bit.

Ignis’s mouth twisted. “I’m so sorry, Prompto.” 

Prompto felt his mouth working. Then his chest tightened and his vision slowly went white. When it cleared again, he was aware of two things: one, his rough, heavy breathing, like he’d been hyperventilating and was just calming down again (and wasn’t that a lovely feeling), and the other was a steady hand on his shoulder. 

“... fix this,” Ignis was saying. “We’ll find a cure for you. We’ll figure out some way for you to nourish yourself. It will be all right. You’ll be all right.”

Would he?  _ Would he?? _

Forever doomed to burn in the sun, forever doomed to drink blood, and never able to eat pizza again…? (Not that there’d been anything as heavenly to eat as pizza in months, but still. When it was available again, he wanted to be able to  _ enjoy it.)  _

He could feel another laugh bubbling up, and not the fun kind. “What, Ignis? What can you do? I’m doomed! Before, everyone  _ thought _ I was a monster, and now I  _ am  _ one _!  _ Niflheim Scourge, right here!” He jabbed his thumb at his chest. “I’ll be run out of every settlement between here and Angelgard for sure! And you know what? They’d be right to do it! They’d be right.” He sagged back in the bed, landing heavily on his pillow.

There was silence for a while then. In it, Prompto wrestled with his growing discomfort; he ached with hunger and was afraid of what that meant. He suppressed a lot of bitter thoughts about himself that scared him more than a little. 

After too long, Ignis cleared his throat. “Well, perhaps we can see about… sourcing food for you.” 

Prompto twisted his nose. “‘Sourcing’? What does that even  _ mean?” _

“Well, when someone has a… specialized diet… there are ways to seek out what they need; find suppliers that can--”

“D’you realize what you’re saying?” Prompto said, shocked at how shrill it came out. “How? How do you just…  _ source… _ what I need?” 

“People donate blood for medicinal use all the time,” Ignis said, sounding almost offended. “It would surely--”

“What, you’d just-- ask people to donate blood to me? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? I left town two months ago because they  _ thought _ I looked like a monster. Well, now I really  _ am  _ one. You think they’ll be okay with that?” 

Ignis’s face turned grim. “You have friends, Prompto,” he said softly. 

“Yeah, kid,” Gladio said. “Friends who want to help you.” 

Prompto couldn’t even be offended at being called a kid. His eyes suddenly burned, and he pressed his palms into them. “Thanks, guys, but…” His voice cracked. “I’m just not sure you can help me.” 

Prompto wanted them to leave him alone. His throat burned with thirst that he knew couldn’t be quenched by water. Ignis and Gladio bounced ideas -- how they could convince the medical facilities to spare some units of blood; asking Prompto if he’d tried to feed on animals (he hadn’t even thought to try).

All the while, Prompto grew more and more hungry, and the scents of his friends grew more and more enticing.

When he didn’t respond to any of their prompts or questions, Gladio finally stood up and left, with a gruff “take it easy,” but Ignis stubbornly stayed, even though Prompto said absolutely nothing. 

Then his stomach rumbled. 

“... You’re hungry,” Ignis said. It wasn’t a question. 

Prompto curled tighter around himself. He didn’t trust himself to open his mouth. 

“Prompto, I… I wonder if I…” There was a shuffling sound of fabric, and Prompto peered over his shoulder to see that Ignis had rolled up his sleeve with a thoughtful twist to his mouth. Ignis’s fingers trailed over his wrist. “May I offer--”

“NO!” Prompto sat bolt upright. “Don’t you  _ dare, _ DON’T you even dare. I…” Prompto inhaled, his breath stuttering. “I couldn’t trust myself.”

“I merely thought--”

“You don’t understand, Ignis. I…” Prompto turned away. “I blanked out. I don’t even remember what I did. I woke up covered in blood and walking through the forest. I… can’t risk that.”  _ I can’t risk you. _

Ignis seemed to ponder this. Then he sighed and unrolled his sleeve. “Very well,” he said tersely. “But at least allow me to--”

“Whatever,” Prompto interrupted, shocking even himself -- but he was having trouble suppressing his rising hunger, and his vision was starting to blur at the edges. He needed Ignis to get out of there. “Just -- I need to be alone.”

Ignis hovered for a while longer, testing Prompto’s self-control to its limits, but then he finally seemed to take the hint and slipped out, and Prompto was left alone, curled up in his misery. 

Time passed in a haze for a while, while Prompto wrestled with himself. It was daylight outside -- the bare brief hours where the sun actually shone in these days of long night -- and that was the only thing that kept Prompto from leaving to find something to eat. 

He hated himself for it. 

He was shocked out of this fugue state when the door opened again and the fresh scent of blood assaulted his nose. Bad enough that his friends smelled so enticing on their own; no. This was blood out in the open, and Prompto shot up in bed, and grabbed the mattress in an effort to keep himself from launching out of it. He controlled himself enough to swing his legs over the side of the bed and clench his fists on his knees. 

Prompto’s eyes finally focused on the silhouette standing in the door -- and it was Ignis yet again, disheveled, with an expression like he’d stepped in something gross. One of his wrists was wrapped in gauze, and the other held a tall glass full of… 

Prompto  _ really _ wanted that to be tomato juice. His nose said otherwise.

Ignis approached slowly. “I brought you something,” Ignis said, and held the glass towards Prompto. He took it.

_ It’s just tomato juice, it’s just tomato juice, it’s just…  _

It wasn’t tomato juice. As soon his lips touched it, he gulped it down greedily and licked the dregs as far as he could. Then he realized what he’d done and started to shake. He dropped the glass, and it shattered on the floor between his feet. 

“Sorry,” he gasped, and it sounded strangled.

“Please, don’t apologize,” Ignis said. “Pardon me.” He turned away and pulled out his phone, and asked it to dial Gladio while Prompto grasped the edge of the bed and tried unsuccessfully to stop trembling. Ignis was talking in a low tone to… probably Gladio… but Prompto only heard it as a low murmur, while his brain whirled unhappily. He didn’t dare move his feet; his socks wouldn’t protect him from the huge shards of glass all over the floor.

A shadow loomed over him. “Prompto,” Ignis said. 

Prompto reluctantly looked up at him through his limp bangs. 

Ignis looked more than usually haggard, even with the visor hiding his sightless eyes, but he still cracked a half-smile in Prompto’s direction. “Gladio will be over soon, to sweep up the glass. Please, don’t exert yourself. Take it easy.”

“Igs…” Prompto whispered. “You… didn’t need to do that.”

“Whatever do you mean?” 

Prompto gestured at Ignis’s wrist -- then sighed, and tapped the bandage. “This. You shouldn’t--”

“I couldn’t do otherwise,” Ignis said. “You were in need, and anything else would have taken too much time. I… probably should ask. How much do you require? And how often?”

“I have no damn idea,” Prompto said with a laugh bordering on hysterical.

Ignis was still for a moment. “Prompto, I—“

“I drained someone,” Prompto said. “I drained an entire someone dry. I think. I don’t…” He laughed again. “I don’t even remember. I just… He was dying, Iggy— and I was so hungry… I couldn’t keep any real food down, and he smelled so… so good and I…” He interrupted himself with a ragged sob.

Then Ignis was there at his side, pressed close, an arm around his shoulder, giving him a tight squeeze. His scent filled Prompto’s nose, and Prompto held his breath, afraid he’d lose control again. But his stomach seemed sated enough for now that, even though this close Ignis smelled super-enticing, Prompto was able to control himself. 

His sobbing slowly died down, and he leaned heavily against Ignis and shuddered while Ignis rubbed his hand up and down Prompto’s bicep, murmuring comforting nothings that didn’t much help at all. Finally, Prompto pushed away from Ignis’s side. 

“You can’t do this,” he said, putting a hand on Ignis’s damaged wrist. That Ignis had damaged himself so Prompto could eat.

Ignis’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “I can’t do nothing,” he said. 

“I used to donate blood all the time; you have to wait eight weeks between.” 

Ignis’s brows pinched together, making a little line between them. “But I want to help,” he said. “And this is something I can do.” 

“Not if you die of it,” Prompto grumbled. “I don’t… I don’t even know how much I need.” 

Ignis breathed a sigh. “I’ll get you a notebook,” he said. “Keep a journal so you know how much you eat and how soon you hunger afterwards.” 

“Yeah, but where’s it gonna come from?” Prompto said.

“I’ll… discuss with the medics,” Ignis said. 

“They need all the resources they have to help people.”

“They’d be helping  _ you.” _

Prompto exhaled, a frustrated huff.

“I’ll talk to all our friends,” Ignis countered. 

“I don’t know that I have enough friends,” Prompto muttered.

“Don’t say that,” Ignis snapped. Then he sighed. “Apologies. I… think perhaps we should continue this discussion later, after--”

A knock on the door interrupted them, and Gladio entered in with a quiet “Hey.” Soon the glass was swept away, and Ignis insisted that Prompto stay, and take his bed. Prompto protested. He had his own place -- not much more than a closet, and shared with three other hunters, but surely he could just go home. 

Gladio laughed at him. “Think it’d be better for you to stay here instead of share close quarters with anyone else.” 

“It’s quite alright, Prompto,” Ignis said. “I can take the couch.”

They wouldn’t budge, and Prompto had to resign himself to knowing he was booting a blind man out of his own bed -- but part of him was relieved. At least Ignis and Gladio knew what was wrong with him and wouldn’t call him a monster. 

Even though he was. He was.


	5. Chapter 5

“You’re an idiot,” Gladio snapped. 

Ignis was leading the way to Lestallum’s storehouses, with Gladio trudging along silently in his wake. Ignis suspected trouble brewing in the silence, and he was willing to wait as long as necessary for Gladio to decide to share what he was thinking -- and here it was coming out. Rather offensively, to be honest. 

“I have no idea what you mean,” Ignis said. He didn’t stop; he kept his steady pace towards the Lestallum storehouses, to get proper food for himself and Gladio. (Not for Prompto, apparently. They’d have to figure something else out there.)

Gladio tapped Ignis’s bandaged wrist. “This is stupid,” he said. “You can’t go doing that; not without a doctor’s supervision, at any rate, and… Iggy, you’ll make yourself sick.” 

“I am aware, Gladio,” Igins said. “But he was absolutely starving, and doing nothing could have put us all in danger.”

Gladio made a discontented noise. 

“He needed  _ something, _ at least,” Ignis continued, “to tide him over until I can speak with the medics.”

“They’re not going to like it,” Gladio said.

Ignis couldn’t deny it. Without explaining the full extent of Prompto’s condition, which Prompto was naturally reluctant for him to do, it would be difficult to convince the medics why anyone, even someone in Ignis’s position, would need units of blood. They were a valuable and scarce medical resource, meant to be administered in a medical facility. 

But Ignis would have to try, all the same. 

“Perhaps you could be convinced to donate to the cause, as well,” Ignis said. “You, Iris, Cor… I’m sure anyone who considers Prompto a friend would be willing.” 

“Yeah, but…” Gladio tapped Ignis’s wrist again. “We ain’t taking knives to our own wrists. Don’t do that again.”

Ignis grimaced. “I don’t plan to. I can’t for another eight weeks, anyway.” 

There were other Glaives and Hunters at the repository, so they discontinued their discussion; instead, Ignis stocked up on protein- and iron-rich foods, things to help boost blood production. It didn’t go unnoticed, and Gladio made a lot of snide side comments the entire time. Ignis only once told him to hush, but otherwise kept his thoughts to himself, until they were on their return trip, laden with bags of supplies.

On the return trip, Ignis finally voiced the option that had been floating in his mind recently. “I wonder,” he started, then hesitated. He was reluctant to share this idea, even with Gladio. “We’ve had an increase in Scourge infections lately, and… a number of them have asked for mercy. It’s been left to the Glaives to fill requests, but I wonder…”

“You talking about mercy assists?” Gladio growled.

No one wanted to say “assisted suicide”, though that’s what it was. Ignis could still viscerally remember the tragedy of Ravus Nox Fleuret.  _ “Kill me,” _ Ravus had said. _ “End this.” _ The prince of Tenebrae, begging for the mercy of death. It was a hideous end. An end every Scourge victim faced. 

Without the Oracle, the only relief was death. Long and torturous alone; swift and painless with the help of friends.

If Prompto could help… Having purpose would give him something to live for, even if it was helping others die. 

And he said so. 

Gladio made a noise in his throat. “I doubt Chocobo Butt’ll agree to it,” he said. “He’s too much of a softie.” 

Ignis twisted his mouth. “He may not have a better source of food,” he said. “And I suspect… if he lets himself get hungry, he’ll only become a danger to others. I think he senses it.” 

“He got this way because of the Scourge,” Gladio said. “You think it’s gonna affect him, if he’s taking in more of it?” 

“I can’t say I hadn’t thought of that…” Ignis said bitterly. “Unfortunately, if we can’t find another source of food for him, we may not have many other options.” 

Gladio made a thoughtful noise again. 

It was a valid concern, though; and one they should probably put some thought into before they expose Prompto to even worse danger. But Ignis wasn’t about to worry Prompto with it; not yet. 

Once at Ignis’s home, Gladio helped put the new food stores away. There was no sound from the back room, where Prompto lay; it was hard to say whether Prompto was sleeping or merely sulking. Either was likely. Ignis opted to let him be. 

They had time. They would take all the time they needed.


	6. Chapter 6

Prompto asked Ignis to tie him up on the off-chance that he got thirsty and went nuts again, but Ignis absolutely refused. Prompto tried to explain how foolish that was, but between his exhaustion and his anxiety, he couldn’t quite form the words. (He had a hard enough time talking Ignis out of things on a  _ good  _ day.) 

And that’s how he found himself staying at Ignis’s place, not showing his face outside, for a whole week. 

Ignis was as good as his word. First, he got Prompto a little notebook -- one with little moogles all over it. (“Apologies,” he’d said, when he handed it over. “It was the only one available.” Which, you know, end-of-the-world meant that factories weren’t producing frivolous things like notebooks.) Second, he did in fact enquire with the med staff about getting units of blood. After  _ that _ trip, he’d come back irate and ranting.

“I thought medical staff were supposed to  _ help _ people,” Ignis muttered, while he clattered around in the kitchen, angrily making use of his scarce coffee reserve.

But Ignis knew as well as Prompto did… if Prompto didn’t have a diagnosed medical condition that required blood, the med staff weren’t going to just give it for the asking. And Prompto wasn’t about to let Ignis tell anyone “Hey, I need this to feed a vampire, could you please give me some?” because that would just sound utterly ridiculous.

Even though it wasn’t. Apparently.

Two days into this new lodging arrangement, Prompto was going stir-crazy. He didn’t trust himself to go outside, for a lot of reasons. By the end of a week, he was completely losing his mind, and he spent most of that time curled up on the cushioned board that Ignis called a bed. He was paying a lot of attention to how he felt -- specifically how hungry he was. 

He wasn’t  _ terribly _ hungry. He definitely thought he  _ could _ eat, if he had the chance. But so far, he felt in control.

Even though Ignis smelled delicious when he walked into the room. 

He seemed to be slightly breathless and in a hurry.

“Prompto,” Ignis said. “I need you to come with me.” 

“Me?” Prompto squeaked. “But I--” 

“I think I have a solution for you,” Ignis said. “But… you might find it distasteful.” 

Prompto snorted. “As distasteful as drinking people’s blood?” 

Ignis’s rueful laugh was not reassuring. “You have a point,” he said. “But we must find a way for you to sustain yourself -- and you can’t do it hiding in my house forever. That will… eventually… only put me in danger as well.” 

It was Prompto’s turn to laugh darkly. Ignis wasn’t wrong, and this had indeed been on Prompto’s mind a lot -- especially the last few days. He’d had to start holding his breath when Ignis came too close.

But Ignis was insistent, and Prompto finally pulled on his boots and followed Ignis out into the sunless twilight. Ignis led him through Lestallum’s narrow streets to a tiny apartment in one of the more run-down areas. Ignis tucked his cane under his arm and rapped on the door.

Prompto heard a flurry of movement from inside the house -- and then the door cracked open, and a harsh voice asked, “Who’s there?” 

“Scientia here,” Ignis said. 

A pale face poked out from behind the door. A thin, gaunt face. “Lord Scientia,” the man said, voice tight with fear. “We… weren’t expecting you.” 

“I was told to report here,” Ignis said. “Please, let us enter. I think I have a solution that will be… more agreeable than our previous alternatives.” 

The man looked between Ignis and Prompto and blanched. But he still backed away from the door and allowed them to enter. He led them to a small room with a pallet. The whole place stank -- a rotten-egg smell that Prompto was all too familiar with. Starscourge.

At the sight of the man on the pallet, gasping and pale except for the darkly mottled patch of skin on his arm, lines of bluish black threading under the skin like veins, Prompto grabbed Ignis by the lapels and dragged him stumbling out of the house. 

“Prompto--!” Ignis protested -- but then Prompto slammed him against the outside wall, and all the air rushed from Ignis in a wheeze. Under his frantic panic, Prompto felt bad. He was hurting a blind man -- and his  _ friend _ \-- and he had underestimated his own unnatural strength. But the fire in his belly raged. 

“What the hell is this, Iggy?” he hissed.

“It’s--” Ignis tried to say, but it sounded strangled, and Prompto loosened his grip on Ignis’s jacket so he could speak. “I thought-- If you were to assist with Starscourge victims. You could… I mean, exsanguination would be a far more peaceful passing than--”

“You want me to  _ drain Starscourge victims?” _ Prompto caught himself just before his voice rose to a shriek. 

“I’m trying to find a way for you to sustain yourself without hurting people.”

“How is this not hurting people?” Prompto pulled his hands away, and Ignis straightened and brushed his hands over his jacket. His expression was tight -- not quite angry. Pained. “Ignis, why didn’t you  _ tell me _ before you brought me here?”

“I thought you would refuse before you could see the need,” Ignis said. “You must understand, Prompto. This is one of the… less savory aspects of my current role. I am tasked with evaluating reports of Starscourge among the residents and helping the families decide, in the absence of an Oracle’s healing power, what course of action to take.”

“I  _ know _ that, but -- Igins, you’re asking  _ me _ to help with suicide.”

“What alternatives do they have?” Ignis was pleading, and Astrals, Ignis shouldn’t ever plead. “They’re doomed to descend into madness. We must keep the residents safe. I don’t find it any less distasteful than you do, but if their choices are painful daemonification, perishing in the wastes by daemon or exposure, or--”

“Distasteful, huh? You say that, but I’m the one who’ll actually taste it.”

“Think of Ravus, I beg you, and ask me if you wouldn’t do the same.”

A flash of memory -- of Ravus, towering over them, blackened, twisted, massive; a grizzly horn sprouting from his head, and Scourge dripping from his mouth, begging them to kill him. Prompto’s gorge rose, and he swallowed against it. There was nothing in his stomach to come up, anyway, but every part of him felt sick.

“I’m not sure there’s another way,” Ignis said. And he grasped for Prompto’s shoulder. “Please, Prompto -- if this will help you, please at least try. Noctis needs us all by his side when he returns. I would never forgive myself if there is any empty spot there and I could have done something.” His voice hitched. 

_ Ignis crying  _ was just wrong, but it was the thing that finally made Prompto take a deep breath. He grasped Ignis by the arms. “Okay,” he said at last, weak and trembling. “No empty spots. Okay. I’ll… try.”

Ignis led him back into the house, then, adjusting his visor as he entered, and offered apologies to the man at the door. The man led Ignis back into the sickroom, while Prompto lingered in the entryway. There was a hushed conversation then, between the man, his sick companion, and Ignis -- quiet whispers that Prompto totally didn’t pay attention to. He didn’t want to listen to this -- didn’t want to be a part of it at all, really.

Then Ignis summoned him with a quiet “Prompto.” When he entered the room, the man lurched to his feet. 

“Can you do it?” he said, his face at once sad and eager. “He said you can make it painless.” 

Prompto swallowed. He wondered how much Ignis had told them about what he would do. “I… I’ll do my best.”

“Thank you,” the man said through tears. “Thank you.”

Prompto couldn’t accept this guy’s gratitude. He ducked his head and knelt beside the pallet.

Behind him, Ignis murmured, “Come, let’s give them privacy.” Then the door closed and it was just Prompto and the moaning victim.

Prompto was no kind of caretaker. He could barely take care of himself. But he took the man’s thin hand in his own. “Hey,” he said, because he thought he should say something. “Ah… I’m gonna. Um.” His bedside manner stank. How do you tell someone you’re gonna drink their blood, anyway?

“Please,” the gaunt man said, voice thin and gasping. “He said… you’d make it quick… and painless. Just… I don’ wanna hurt anyone.”

Prompto’s heart clenched. He thumbed the guy’s wrist, then his elbow… That’s where they always took HIS blood when he donated. And he certainly wasn’t gonna latch on to some unknown dude’s neck. That was way too… intimate. 

And now that Prompto was paying attention to the guy’s veins, he could hear the dude’s heartbeat -- frantic and fearful, because who wasn’t afraid of death? And that’s what Prompto was bringing, wasn’t he? He’d killed people by now -- Imperials in uniform, MTs (though their person-hood was kind of up for debate, but he wasn’t about to dive down  _ that _ particular rabbit hole right now with so much else to panic about) -- but this guy was a ‘friendly’. Prompto would ordinarily be getting even more anxious at this point, but the hole in his stomach, and the sound of the guy’s pulse hammering in his ears, brought his thirst to the forefront, and now he was salivating. 

Prompto swallowed. “Okay, uh… you’re gonna feel a prick and I can’t say it won’t hurt. But--”

The guy chuckled, a thin, desperate sound. “I’ve known pain, kid… nothin’ you c’n do’ll be worse than… the other stuff I’ve been through.” He lifted his other hand and put it on Prompto’s shoulder. “Name’s Avis. Remember me.”

Prompto choked on his reply. He nodded. When he found his voice, he said, “You might wanna… close your eyes.” Then he pulled the guy’s elbow to his mouth. He could see the cluster of blue veins there right in the joint, close to the skin. 

He bit.

The guy’s hissing intake of breath didn’t even register, because as soon as Prompto’s mouth flooded with the coppery flavor of blood, it was all over. He thirstily drank, and drank and drank. The bitter overtones didn’t make him any less desperate -- though it might be the taint of the Scourge, it was still blood, and Prompto realized he’d been pretty good at suppressing his hunger, because now he drank like he was starving. 

He didn’t even pay attention when Avis gripped his shoulder tightly, fingers digging into Prompto’s shoulder. Avis didn’t pull away, and that was good; Prompto wasn’t sure what he’d do if his prey tried to escape from him. Under his fingers, he felt Avis’s pulse fluttering. Avis’s grip on his shoulder loosened, and his arm fell.

Prompto continued drinking, even after he could no longer sense the flutter of Avis’s pulse. He continued even as Avis sagged on the mattress, all tension gone from his limbs. 

He drank until there was nothing left, and the smell of blood was replaced with a different scent… and a little puzzling provided him with the answer: it was the scent of death. 

Prompto dropped Avis’s arm. Numb, he settled Avis’s hands on his chest. He wiped the bite with a corner of the blanket. Then he scrambled to his feet. He scrubbed at his face; it wouldn’t do to walk out there with blood all around his mouth. Then he opened the door.

Ignis said something -- and the other man, too -- but it didn’t register at all. Prompto drifted through the room and out the front door and away from the cursed little apartment where he’d just killed someone. Not someone. Avis.  _ The guy’s name was Avis.  _ Avis’s blood sat heavy in Prompto’s gut.  _ “Remember me,”  _ he’d said. 

Prompto would never forget, and he’d hate himself forever.

* * *

Prompto wandered the streets for a while. They weren’t really dark; the daemon lights flooded every corner, even at night -- which was most of the day, now. Prompto probably looked a sight. Gaunt, pale, eyes with an odd red cast now. He didn’t see anyone, and that was just as well; they would have seen him for the monster he was now. The monster who killed people. That was all he was good for now, anyway.

He wasn’t hungry for a change. Having a full belly at last just made him realize all the more that he was walking a thin line here, sharing space with people that were ultimately just food to him now. Worrying about that filled his wandering for quite a while -- until his phone pinged. He pulled it out of his pocket. 

**Iggy [12:46am]** >> Where are you?

Fresh guilt surged up through the self-loathing. He’d left Ignis alone; had just wandered away without saying anything. What a miserable friend he was.

But he wasn’t a friend; he was a monster. Ignis wasn’t safe letting Prompto stay at his house; it would only end badly. 

**Prompto [12:49am]** >> nowhere  
**Prompto [12:49am]** >> couldn’t stay there  
**Prompto [12:49am]** >> had to go clear my head

**Iggy [12:51am]** >> I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been for you.   
**Iggy [12:51am]** >> Come on home; get some rest.  
**Iggy [12:52am]** >> Wouldn’t do to be out on the streets at this time of night.

Prompto snorted.  _ Wouldn’t do for anyone to run into the monster in a dark alley. _

**Prompto [12:53am]** >> easy for you to say   
**Prompto [12:53am]** >> you’re not the monster

Prompto watched the little dots that showed Ignis was typing something do their little bouncing thing off and on for a couple minutes. Ignis must really be thinking out his response to this one. Ever the diplomat; always thinking about how things sound.

It took several minutes for Ignis to formulate his response.

**Iggy [12:59am]** >> You’re not a monster either. Trust me, I’ve seen monsters and I know. Please come home.

The ‘please’ got him. That, and what Ignis had said before: _ “He needs us all by his side when he returns.” _

Noctis needed them all. Prompto couldn’t leave an empty spot. He’d have to figure out some way to make it through to the Dawn -- and if anyone could help him do that, it would be Ignis. 

Prompto just wished he could trust  _ himself. _


	7. Chapter 7

Avis was the first… but not the hardest. 

Over the next several weeks, Ignis called on Prompto for his “services” with grim regularity. There was a new Scourge victim every five or six days, with symptoms ranging from mild but tolerable to excruciating and nearly incoherent. They were, of course, all terminal -- and most of them were of sound mind still by the time Prompto got to them. 

The ones that weren’t… were pretty awful.

The worst was the one that was nearly raving, and tried to attack Prompto after they were left alone together for him to do his job. Prompto discovered pretty quickly that his reflexes were more than a match for someone who was on the way to being a daemon. He pinned the guy’s arms to the mat with his hands pretty quickly, and knelt with one knee on the guy’s thighs and the other on his chest. This time, he couldn’t reach the guy’s elbows and had to take him by the throat.

He was almost glad that the fugue of drinking distracted him from how awkward this was.

And he thanked the Astrals that he’d gotten the guy’s permission long before; this felt a little too brutal, even for him -- though he felt a feral satisfaction deep in his gut, like something inside responding to the violence. 

That night, he almost went straight home to tell Ignis he couldn’t do it anymore. Almost.

The bitterness of the Scourge taint lingered a little longer after each victim, coating his mouth and leaving him feeling vaguely ill. He thought about mentioning it to Ignis, but decided against it when he noticed a weird-looking patch of skin on his bicep one night. He froze in front of the mirror and fingered it. It… didn’t have the bluish-black sheen of the Scourge, though -- it was more of a reddish tinge. More like the color of blood. 

Either way, Prompto felt faint. Then he shuddered and rummaged through his dresser for his lone long-sleeved shirt and pulled it on. He’d have to watch the refugee donations for more.

Naturally, Ignis didn’t notice for a while that Prompto had changed his wardrobe. Unfortunately, Gladio noticed right away, when he arrived one night two weeks later, freshly returned from a hunt. As soon as he came through Ignis’s door, he caught sight of Prompto and his face turned hard. And since Prompto was shut up in Ignis’s house for Reasons, it wasn’t like he could avoid Gladio very well when the guy grabbed Prompto’s elbow and steered him outside. 

He pinched Prompto’s sleeve. “What’s up with this,” he said, but Prompto could hear it in his voice: Gladio  _ knew. _ It was the kind of thing Scourge victims just did, sometimes, when things started going south. Hide it as long as possible while they willed it to just go away. 

(It never went away.) 

When Prompto tried to answer with vague noises, Gladio just grabbed his wrist and shoved the sleeve up his arm until the dark patch was visible. Gladio’s eyes widened, and then he exhaled, and Prompto felt his fingers tighten against Prompto’s wrist. 

“How long?” he said, his voice rough.

Prompto tried to pull his wrist away, but this was Gladio. It was futile. Not without using his newfound strength. Someone might get hurt. “A while,” he finally admitted. 

“Does Ignis know?” 

“Haven’t told him.” 

Gladio said nothing for a while -- just turned Prompto’s arm this way and that, examining the mark. “Doesn’t look right,” he said finally. “Not the right color.”

“Yeah,” Prompto grumbled. “Grows like it, though.”

Gladio heaved an unsteady breath. “What’re you gonna do about it?” 

Prompto couldn’t help a high-pitched, desperate laugh. “What  _ can _ I do? I’m already a mess. Might as well be a  _ royal _ mess.” 

“You gotta tell Ignis,” Gladio said, letting Prompto’s arm drop. “He has a right to know.”

“What good’ll that do?” Prompto asked bitterly. “He can’t do anything. No one can.” 

“That’s not the point.”

_ No empty spots.  _ It would hurt Noctis if they weren’t all there to greet his return, but the Starscourge didn’t care. 

“It’s too late,” Prompto said, pushing away from Gladio and heading back into Ignis’s apartment. (Prompto’s now, too, he guessed.)

Gladio followed. And of  _ course _ he wasn’t going to let this go. “You’re not just gonna take this sitting down,” he said, following closely behind Prompto through the door. 

“Take what sitting down?” Ignis asked from the kitchen. He was putting his renewed cooking skills to the test, making a simple soup. Not that Prompto could share it. Real food didn’t even smell good to him anymore, and Stars, if that wasn’t the most depressing thing  _ ever. _

“Nothing,” Prompto said. “It’s nothing.” 

“Bullshit,” Gladio snapped.

Prompto snapped his mouth shut. 

“Tell him,” Gladio said. 

Prompto shook his head. 

“Tell me what?” Ignis said.

_ “Tell him,”  _ Gladio said again, through clenched teeth.

Ignis sighed. “You might as well.” 

“Prompto’s got--”

“No!” 

And curse it, Ignis was too smart for anybody’s good. Nobody had said  _ anything  _ yet, but Ignis inhaled sharply. “No.” His voice cracked. “You have Starscourge. I… I had hoped… Oh Prompto, I’m so sorry. This is my fault, making you--”

“Can it,” Gladio cut in. “You were helping him, and he was helping a lot of other people… We knew there’d be a risk.”

“I just hoped it wouldn’t…” He pinched his nose, and Prompto caught the gleam of tears starting down his angular cheek. Prompto rubbed his arms and looked away. 

They stood there a moment in silence for some time before Ignis found his voice again.

“What shall we do, then?” Because of course, Ignis would go straight to the problem-solving, looking for a solution.

“Well, I don’t know, Ignis,” Prompto said, and felt a little bad for how snippy it came out. “I mean, I could just head out in daylight, but hey… there’s not much of that anymore, so it wouldn’t make a difference.” 

“Please,” Ignis said, softly.

“You could… help me,” Prompto said. He looked at the ground, not wanting to see their faces. “I know you’d make it quick.”

Gladio’s sharp intake of breath hissed through his teeth, and Ignis made a soft noise. 

“Impossible,” Ignis said. 

“But you ask me to do it all the time.” Prompto leveled a look at Ignis. 

“But there’s so much more we can do, still,” Ignis said. “Surely we haven’t exhausted all our options yet. Surely we could get Sania to--”

“Sania’s doing enough. She still hasn’t found anything yet.”

“You’re one of our best hunters. Without your skills, we would--”

“There’s other hunters.”

“But we could--”

“Every time I help one of your Scourge victims, it gets worse. Igs… If I lose control, it’ll be a bloodbath. People would get hurt.”

“It’s… I couldn’t… not for such a close friend.” 

“And you think I won’t eventually be asked to do it for a close friend?”

“Please… please don’t ask this of me.” 

Ignis looked utterly miserable, hands clenched at his sides. Behind him, Gladio stood silent and solemn, not saying anything, but his eyes were sad and strangely watery. 

Prompto thought of this apartment Ignis shared with him now. Of the constant scent of blood, the reminders that he already was a monster. He thought of himself succumbing to the Starscourge and becoming even more dangerous than he already was. Of what he would do to Ignis if that happened.

_ No empty spots. _

Not like he had any control over it.

“Fine,” he said. 

He turned on his heel and marched right to the little closet where his bed was, and shut himself in. He curled up on the bed. 

He could hear Ignis and Gladio talking in hushed voices, but he didn’t even try to listen. They wouldn’t see things his way, anyway. There was no way he could make them see his perspective -- not about this. Maybe it was unfair for him to expect them to do this -- a thing he knew by experience was already awful enough when it  _ wasn’t  _ someone he knew.

They didn’t follow him, didn’t bother him once he was in his cubby, and soon enough, their voices died down and he heard the shuffling of Ignis settling for the night. Then the apartment was silent. 

Prompto waited for a long time. He listened to Ignis’s soft, regular breathing for a long time. Then he gathered himself and quietly opened his door -- careful of the squeaking hinge -- and slipped from his room into the apartment proper. 

Everything he really needed was in Noct’s astral pocket -- and he hadn’t lost access to it, in spite of his condition, so he didn’t worry about gathering anything. Not even his change of clothes. He just slipped out the front door and headed down the street to the exit. A hunter was on watch there, and gave a curt wave but didn’t stop him. Prompto waved too, as he walked out, and didn’t look back. 

It was true night. Even without the Scourge obscuring the sky, it would be dark. Prompto kept to the roads. There weren’t a lot of lights, but he didn’t really need them; the daemons ignored him, as though he was one of them. 

Still, he didn’t get far. 

He was probably halfway to the bridge over the confluence when he heard the unmistakable sound of chocobo feet in the distance behind him. He made a dash for the stairs that led down to the river -- to the path that led to the big waterfall (and the icy cavern Talcott’s research had led them to, where Noct had found one of his Royal Arms) -- but before he made it off the road, he heard a wordless cry, a very distinctive “kweh”, and the rush of a chocobo sprinting. Then someone called his name. 

Gladio. 

He could hear two different chocobo treads now; he wondered if the other was Ignis, and if he was just trusting his chocobo to follow Gladio’s in the dark. 

Prompto didn’t stop. He took the stairs two at a time in his haste. He wondered if he could make it across the river before they reached him… but what Prompto didn’t account for was the fact that Gladio wouldn’t bother with the stairs. Instead, he launched his chocobo over the side railing. It glided down to the path in front of Prompto, cutting off his flight. 

He knew it was futile at this point, but he was still about to turn around to dash back up to the road, but then he heard the other chocobo making its way down the stairs. With the stone wall on one side and a ridge of rocks on the other, Prompto was trapped.

“The hell’re you going?” Gladio growled.

“Away,” Prompto said. He contemplated scaling the stone wall up to the road.

“What does  _ away _ mean?” Gladio snapped. 

“Somewhere I’m not gonna hurt anybody.” The rocky outcropping between them and the river looked promising, and difficult for the chocobos to navigate. 

“What about hurting  _ you?”  _

“Yeah, you know, I’m all for that ‘no empty spots’ thing, but seriously, we all know I’m not long for this world.” If he hurried, he could maybe skirt around Gladio’s bird and get away while he tried to wrestle the chocobo around to follow him.

“What are you saying?” Ignis said, pulling his chocobo to a stop behind Prompto. “Prompto, I don’t--”

“No! Just don’t say it. Don’t you think I  _ want _ to be there for Noct?” 

Prompto darted for the gap between Gladio and the rocks, and scrambled up the outcropping. Gladio cursed, but Prompto didn’t look back. He ignored the creak of leather, the scrambling of the chocobo’s feet as Gladio wheeled it around. He just clambered up the rocks with a nimbleness he didn’t know he had, and threw himself into the dense thickets beyond. The thorns tugged at him, but he ignored them, even as they dug into his skin. It would all heal itself quickly enough. He seemed to be good at that now.

With some effort, Prompto broke through the thicket and out onto the pebbly riverside. His feet slid on the rocks, but he lunged forward anyway. A stray thought rose from somewhere in the recesses of his memory, about vampires and flowing water, and he thought maybe he could throw himself in before Gladio or Ignis could get there and do anything to stop him.

He could hear them, wrangling their chocobos as quickly as they could down the rugged path. To the west, at the confluence of the river with the runoff from the waterfall, he could see the silhouette of a massive Midgardsormr carcass coiled on the stones -- taken by daemons or ambitious Glaives sometime during the years of darkness. 

In the dark, Prompto couldn’t clearly gauge the depth of the river. He’d left his clip-on torch behind, knowing he didn’t need it anymore and someone else probably did. Leaving it behind was the best choice at this point; it’d be a glaring beacon to help Gladio find him. Ignis… well, if Prompto messed up and made sounds, Ignis would find him in a heartbeat. The guy was uncanny. 

Prompto winced at every shift of rocks, every scrape of his feet, and wondered if maybe this wasn’t the best idea after all -- and he heard the chocobos making their way down the path, while Gladio and Ignis yelled for him, called for him to wait. 

Then there was a shift… Gladio’s sharp curse, followed by the groaning sound of an Iron Giant rising from the dirt. Ignis’s inarticulate cry of alarm. The shrieks of their chocobos. The thud of someone hitting the ground. 

Prompto ground his teeth. He couldn’t just leave them alone. He had to do something. He dashed in the direction of the sound. He took long enough to see Ignis on the ground. Gladio was scrambling to his feet from where his chocobo had thrown him, but not quickly enough. The Iron Giant lifted his sword for a blow.

In a heartbeat, Prompto threw himself at the Iron Giant with a fervor he’d never felt before, taking out on it all the frustrations that had built up over the weeks _. _

Iron Giants were one of those daemons that Prompto would never tackle alone, ever -- but he wasn’t thinking about that now. He was thinking instead about his origins. About how he was  _ made. _ About the whatever-it-was in his blood that was responsible for him being a vampire now. About the need to drink blood. The faces of all the scourge victims he’d helped die. 

About his own Scourge infection. 

In his rage, he barely noticed that his fingernails had lengthened, sharp and black, and when he slashed at the dense iron armor, it parted under his claws like butter. He let his rage drive him, and dismantled the monster piece by piece. Before he knew it, the Iron Giant was groaning its last as he stood over it, chest heaving.

He didn’t have time to rest. More daemons bubbled up from the ground, and Prompto found himself tearing through reapers, liches, and even a mindflayer -- and then Ignis made a sound, and Prompto whirled around to see a whole mob of imps swarming his friends. Gladio held his own, and Ignis wielded his daggers with his usual panache, but there were just  _ so many. _

With a growl, Prompto launched himself at them.

He lost himself in the fight. He tried not to, though, because pretty quickly, he could smell that both his friends were bleeding from a lot of little wounds. He held his breath and let the fire of his hunger fuel his fighting. 

Before he knew it, all the daemons were gone, dissolving into Scourge goo. The sudden quiet jolted Prompto back into reality. 

He looked at his hands. Each finger was its own weapon. Long, black claws dripped daemon ichor. He really  _ was _ a monster. He willed them to disappear, to go back to his own hands, his own skin, but they stubbornly refused to be normal.

“Prompto?” 

Prompto turned. Gladio stood there, leaning into his greatsword, its tip dug into the ground. He looked exhausted, and was bleeding everywhere. And so was Ignis. At the smell of their blood, Prompto’s stomach clenched and he trembled. 

Ignis staggered to his feet, and then dusted at his jacket out of habit. “You saved us,” he gasped. “You took down an Iron Giant. Alone.” 

“Never seen anything like it,” Gladio said between staggered breaths. 

“And all those other daemons,” Ignis said.

“Thought we were gonners.”

“Prompto, we definitely would have died without you.” 

“You wouldn’t’ve been in this mess without me,” Prompto said, his voice oddly slurred. He didn’t like the tremor in his legs. 

“You would be an asset to any team you worked with,” Ignis pressed.

“I’d be a liability,” Prompto countered.

“Prompto--”

“This isn’t making me feel better,” Prompto interrupted. Speech was getting harder.

“We’re only saying it because  _ we need you,”  _ Gladio snapped. 

Prompto was about to argue more, but another scent intruded on him… not the rot of the Midgardsormr’s corpse, not the sulfuric stench of daemons; this was something else, something both familiar and strange, tinged with old blood. Then a body slammed into him, and knocked him to the ground. 

Prompto started to struggle, but as soon as it was on him, it was off again -- and launching itself at Ignis. 

Though it was dark, Prompto’s new eyes -- more sensitive now -- could still see the figure’s blonde hair, and gangly limbs. He couldn’t see its face, but he didn’t have to.  _ It was a clone. _ An infected clone, like the one that had attacked him and ruined his life. 

His friends were in trouble.

Ignis had had just enough warning to raise his daggers in defense, before the vampire clone was on him. Gladio dismissed his sword, and lunged to push between the two, trying to shove the clone away. Instead, the clone threw Gladio off as if he weighed nothing, instead of the three-hundred-pound behemoth he was. The clone started to lunge again, and in that moment, Prompto acted. 

He launched himself at his doppleganger and flung it away from Ignis. It rolled across the stony riverside and came to a stop just short of the river’s edge. 

Prompto positioned himself between the clone and his friends, and flexed his claws. “Get out of here, guys,” he said, and… the new shape of his mouth made speech surprisingly difficult. 

He didn’t listen to their scrambling retreat, or the whistle as they tried to summon their birds. He just launched himself at the clone before it could get to its feet. Their tussle was almost anticlimactic. The clone was desperate; probably starving, if its emaciated body was any clue. And though its blotchy skin meant it was definitely infected with Starscourge, it wasn’t nearly as infected as Prompto was now.

He got no satisfaction in the fight. The clone was tough, but it was pretty easy to beat it back, to fend it off with Prompto’s newly-sharp claws, to grab its head and give its neck a sharp twist. The resulting crack made Prompto wince. The clone convulsed once and went still in his hands. 

Once, killing someone like this would have made him sick. 

This time… The smell of the clone’s fading vitality hit him first. The clone might have been starving, but it still had blood in it. And since he was leaving Lestallum, Prompto had no idea when he’d be able to feed again. 

Prompto was glad his friends had fled already so they didn’t have to watch. 

There was no need for delicacy here. Prompto fell to his knees, cradling the clone in his lap. He leaned over it, sank teeth into its neck, and drank. The thing’s tainted blood tasted of tar, but still satisfied his thirst, even as the darkness in it latched onto Prompto like an amoeba, tainting him just as deeply. 

It was over soon, and he shoved the clone off his knees, put his head in his unnatural hands, and… sat there. Normally, he would have cried… but he wasn’t sure that daemons could.


	8. Chapter 8

Keeping hold of a running bird as it fled in a panic was incredibly difficult, Ignis found… especially when you were covered in lacerations and bleeding. 

At least his chocobo was trained to follow other people’s birds, and Gladio was near. As long as he had company, he could trust he wasn’t getting lost. But they couldn’t just run off and leave Prompto on his own. He clenched his hands on the reins.

“Gladio!” he yelled, trying to be heard over the rushing wind. “Gladio, we _must_ go back!” 

“Just trying to keep _you_ from getting hurt,” Gladio yelled back at him. 

Ignis swallowed his sharp resentment at the assumption that he needed help. Prompto likely didn’t need help, either; but if they left now, would they ever see him again? “We _can’t_ just leave him alone here!” 

“I know,” Gladio growled in frustration. There was a jangle of tack and the sound of feathers rustling. Ignis’s own bird slowed its pace. 

Soon they had wheeled around, and Gladio led the way back to the riverside, down the stairs, down the path, to where Prompto presumably still was.

Ignis hated having to wait on Gladio’s lead. The rocky terrain here was treacherous, and he could never have made his way alone. He remained on his bird, while Gladio went ahead. 

“Prompto!” Gladio said, and with a rustle and a thud of boots, he was on the ground; then more thumps as Gladio rushed to wherever Prompto was. 

Ignis stayed on his bird, and steered it towards the sound of Gladio. He could hear Prompto’s harsh breathing.

“Prompto, talk to me,” Gladio said.

“I…” Prompto growled, his voice thick and unnatural. 

“Prompto.”

“Nnngh.” 

There was a shuffle, and a shift of rocks; Ignis imagined that Gladio was helping Prompto to his feet. 

“C’mon, buddy,” Gladio said. “Gotta get you back to--”

“Nnno,” Prompto said. “Gla…” 

Another shift of rocks, and Gladio made a heavy grunt. “Hey,” he said. 

“Llllook ‘t me,” Prompto said. “I’mmn… I’m nnn… not…”

“You’re our _friend,”_ Ignis said.

Prompto made some kind of dismissive noise. “Yyyyou cnn’t see me,” he said. And his voice was thicker, heavy with emotion. “I’mm not--”

“I don’t need to _see_ you to know you’re a friend,” Ignis said, making his voice purposefully gentle. “Prompto -- if you were fully a daemon, you wouldn’t be talking to us. We… Gladio and I… we both know we can place our trust in you.” He dismounted, and carefully picked his way across the stones. He did pretty well for a few steps, but then one of his feet slid on the pebbles, and he stumbled. 

A hand grabbed his bicep. “Careful, Iggy,” Gladio murmured near his ear.

Ignis righted himself, and once he was steady again, Gladio let go. Ignis brushed his shirt, then cocked his head.

“Prompto,” he said, reaching a hand out. “Please.”

There was a long hesitation before Prompto sighed -- deeper than his usual sighs -- and Ignis felt a hand in his. 

Ignis _knew_ Prompto’s hands. This hand felt unfamiliar. The fingers were too long, and ended in dagger-like claws. And the skin… It almost seemed to be covered with a chitinous exoskeleton. Ignis ran a thumb over the pronounced knuckles. 

“Are you in pain?” he asked. 

“Nnnno,” Prompto answered, and withdrew his hand.

“And yet you’re still… coherent.” 

A pause. “Yyessss.” 

Ignis’s heart ached. 

Gladio made a soft noise. “Most people are raving by this point,” he said. There was a smacking sound, like Gladio had thumped Prompto on the shoulder or back. “You’re pretty damn strong.”

Prompto didn’t reply. There was a shift of pebbles again, and Ignis wondered if Prompto was shuffling his feet, as was his habit. A human habit. 

“Whatever’s happening to you,” Ignis said, “it isn’t progressing as daemon transformations usually do. Would you… come back with us?”

Prompto hissed, a sharp intake of breath.

“Igs…” Gladio said, tentatively. “He can’t go back to Lestallum.” 

“But surely we could--” 

“You don’t get it,” Gladio said. “The daemon lights’d probably get ‘im before he got inside the wall.”

So he was that far gone, then. Ignis’s heart sank -- but only for a moment. He hardened his feelings into steely determination instead. “We’ll figure it out,” he said. “Your place is with _us,_ Prompto. And we’ll get you to Noct’s side, when he returns, come what may.”

It sounded more optimistic, maybe, than Ignis might feel, and Prompto’s dismissive noise made it clear what _he_ felt about it, too… but if Ignis could do anything, it would be to see his companions to Noct’s side at the dawn, whatever he could do.

* * *

It took some doing.

Most of the doing was convincing Prompto that he didn’t deserve to die. 

He definitely couldn’t return to Lestallum; not as he looked now. Ignis could hear it in the timbre of Prompto’s voice, and the direction it came from (Prompto had definitely gained some inches). His claws never retracted; his hands remained lethal weapons. 

(Gladio gave Ignis a gruff description later; Prompto hadn’t grown any horns or anything strange like that, but the Scourge tainted his skin and his face had definitely lengthened. His fangs were particularly more prominent now, and his eyes glowed an uncanny red.)

At Ignis’s insistence, Prompto set up house in the cave behind the waterfall -- the icy domain of daemons that they’d explored with Noctis to find one of the Royal Arms. Ignis managed to bring him some comforts -- a cot, blankets, a small generator and fuel, and a simple radio, when Prompto’s new hands proved to lack the dexterity to manage a phone.

Prompto seemed resigned to Ignis’s fussing. He submitted to it, at least, and he didn’t ask again for them to give him the release of death. He didn’t ask for much of anything, really. He soon ceased to speak at all, which concerned Ignis at first, until Prompto, writing clumsily in the dirt with a claw for Gladio to read, made it known that he just didn’t have a voice anymore. Not one that could make human speech, at least -- and he didn’t want to alarm them with the noises he _could_ make.

But, to Ignis’s satisfaction, Prompto grew into the conviction that he had a _purpose._ And that, it seemed, was all he needed.

Prompto single-handedly kept the area around the waterfall and the confluence daemon-free, which proved a great boon for all the hunters in the area. Ignis forwarded him information about the most troublesome marks, and Prompto was perfectly willing to travel as far as he had to in order to help. Sometimes, he would accompany Ignis on forrays -- though only under duress, and only if he wasn’t hungry. 

They continued to refer Scourge victims to him. And he became absolutely crucial in dealing with the other clones, which continued to show up now and then, harassing the scattered settlements and terrorizing the citizens. Prompto was really the only one they could send to deal with the things. He was incredibly effective at it.

And so Ignis and Gladio kept Prompto busy, and kept him alive, and the years passed, until in their darker hours they began to despair of Noctis ever returning.

Then they got the message from Talcott.

* * *

Ignis and Gladio reached Hammerhead first. 

They’d been out of touch for a long time, and coming together after not seeing each other for months was refreshing, especially for something as hopeful as this. Putting an end to this darkness, bringing back hope for humanity… that was what they had worked towards every day for the past ten years.

Then Ignis heard the blessed sound of the truck’s motor approaching. The gate rumbled open to admit Talcott’s truck, and when the truck chugged to a stop, its door creaked open and a pair of boots landed on the ground, and strode towards them in an achingly familiar stride. 

“Hey,” Noctis said, and Ignis’s heart clenched. 

“‘Hey’?” Gladio growled. “That’s all you have to say for yourself, after all this time?”

There was a rough shuffle, a tussle Ignis couldn’t see, and both Noctis and Gladio chuckled. Ignis just smiled at their unseen antics.

“Hey…” Noctis said again. “Where’s Prompto?”

“He’ll join us on the way,” Ignis said, hoping it was true. He’d sent word to Prompto as soon as he’d received Talcott’s message. 

They didn’t linger long in Hammerhead. Noctis was anxious to get on his way; to do his part to bring the Dawn, whatever that might entail. As soon as they left the nimbus of the daemon lights, a shadow separated itself from the wider desert and joined them on the road.

Noctis backed away in alarm, a shuffling of his shoes against the pavement, but Gladio laughed, and there was a slap, likely one of Gladio’s large hands against the shadow’s shoulder. “Took you long enough,” Gladio said.

The shadow made a deep chortling sound. 

“Gladio,” Noctis said shakily. “Is that--!”

“Prompto,” Ignis said. “It’s so good to see you.” 

The shadow chortled again, and Ignis felt a long-fingered hand brush his shoulder.

“Prompto…?” Noctis sounded faint. 

An explanation was definitely in order, and Ignis undertook the task, as they followed Umbra and cleared the daemons from the wasted landscape to the gates leading to Insomnia. The telling was uncomfortable. Noctis was properly sympathetic to Prompto’s struggles. None of them acknowledged the future plight Prompto might face. He was a daemon now, albeit not a proper one. What would happen to him, when Noctis fulfilled his duty and eradicated the Scourge? It wasn’t a question they could answer -- and in truth, when Noct’s mission would save all of Eos from the darkness, Prompto wouldn’t want him to stop, just to save one person.

Even if that person was Noct’s best friend.

Prompto showed his worth over and over again, easily felling monstrosities that at one time would have been a challenge to all of them. It was enough that Noctis praised him several times, leaving Prompto squirming with pleased discomfort.

The lulls between fights were filled with chatter at once light-hearted and heavy.

Their camp, on the cliff where they had overlooked the ruin of Insomnia so many years ago, was a solemn and tender affair in turns, and though Prompto had no voice, he still sobbed with them all, when Noctis explained the hateful requirements of the Prophecy.

Then came Insomnia. 

It was a nightmare wrapped in a nightmare. Ignis’s gratitude that he didn’t have to see the full ruin of his home was countered only by the determination to fix what had been wrought, by whatever means required. 

Prompto’s skills were more useful than ever here, facing against the creatures that had made Insomnia their home in the long dark. Spawn of nagas and arachnes, even a massive behemoth king -- and the Cerberus at the gates. All would have been far more of an issue without Prompto’s help.

* * *

They faced the Infernian.

They faced Ardyn on the throne.

Then Ardyn lashed out with his dark magic, and Ignis fell senseless to the floor. When he and his companions woke again, it was to the sound of Noct’s battle outside, and the three of them rushed quickly to the base of the Citadel, to offer what aid they could. 

By the time they reached the Citadel gates, the battle was over, and Noctis was victorious.

It was still dark when Noctis ascended the stairs to the Citadel for the last time, alone. 

Behind them, the daemons rose from the ground, a bubbling, groaning sound that Ignis had long begun to loathe. It roared in his ears; so many daemons converged on them. They had to keep the things from breaching the Citadel. 

Then they battled. 

The three of them fought with the fervor borne of desperation, knowing that if they could just hold out until the end, they would be free. Ignis didn’t have time to think about what would happen to Prompto when it was over; he was too focused on staying alive. 

The fight dragged on and on. Then, just as Ignis thought his legs would give out, that his arms felt heavy as lead and could barely hold his weapon, that he couldn’t weather anymore blows, it was over. A shudder rippled through the magic that bound him to Noctis, a sweeping backlash that washed over him and then faded.

As soon as it faded, Ignis knew… Noctis was gone. Their connection to his magic was severed forever. 

But Ignis only had a moment to acknowledge it when all the daemons around them groaned in unison, crying out. Ignis kept his daggers at the ready, but no longer felt any rush of air, no longer heard any scrambling feet on the pavement to presage an attack.

“They’re… dissolving,” Gladio gasped.

Then, at a short distance, among the sounds of the other daemons, Ignis heard Prompto’s distinctive voice, in the throes of agony. 

“Prompto,” he breathed, and moved in the direction of the sound. Gladio moved, too, and they reached Prompto at nearly the same time. Their weapons clattered to the ground, no longer connected to the magical armory. Ignis would have to search for them later; this was far more important. 

Instead, he dropped to his knees and extended his hand. He found Prompto’s shoulder by touch. Prompto was hunched nearly double, and his skin writhed beneath Ignis’s fingers. Ignis nearly jerked his hand away, but willed himself to keep it there. Prompto needed a friendly touch, and seldom allowed it these days. 

“We’re here,” Gladio murmured on Prompto’s other side. Ignis heard the soft sound of Gladio’s hand rubbing Prompto’s back. Then… “He’s not disappearing like the others.” Gladio sounded surprised. 

“I want it to be a good sign,” Ignis replied.

Between them, Prompto gasped and moaned, and then… 

Ignis was distracted by warmth on his face. 

“Gladio, is… is that…?” 

“The sun,” Gladio said.

And then Ignis couldn’t speak. Some emotion lodged in his throat. Grief, knowing Noctis was gone? Fear, wondering what would become of Prompto now…? _Relief._ Hateful relief that Noct’s sacrifice was not in vain; that the sun had returned. At what that meant for the scattered remnants of humanity.

Tears made wet trails down Ignis’s face, and he took a shuddering breath.

The sun rose swiftly. Its warmth tracked down Ignis’s face with the tears. Soon the light would be angled to hit Prompto as well. The rest of the daemons… Everything around them had grown silent. “Are the other daemons gone?” Ignis asked, his voice rough.

A shift of leather. “Seems so,” Gladio said, his voice angled away like he was looking around them. “Just Prompto left, and…” His voice choked up with emotion. “He’s lookin’ better than he has in ages.”

“Is he?” Ignis said.

Prompto shifted under Ignis’s splayed palm, and groaned. The timbre of his voice was more human than he’d sounded in years. He shuddered and sighed, and went utterly still. “Aaah,” he breathed. 

“Prompto?” Ignis said. 

Then Prompto sat up. Ignis let his hand linger on Prompto’s shoulder. Then… 

“Ignis?” Prompto said, his voice hesitant and hoarse. Then, “Ignis!”

Before Ignis had time to process that _Prompto was speaking to him,_ his arms were suddenly full of Prompto, nearly choking as Prompto squeezed his arms around Ignis’s neck. Prompto was shivering. No… Prompto was crying into Ignis’s shoulder, great heaving sobs. Then he lunged away.

“Gladio!” he cried. 

In the sound of their embrace and Gladio’s rough “Good to have you back, buddy,” Ignis took a moment to wipe his face and attempt to compose himself. Then someone grabbed him and tugged him in, entwining him into the tangle of arms. He held onto the bodies on either side, and they held him, too, and they all fell to weeping, unashamed. 

Noctis was gone. 

But Prompto was here. Prompto had come through, had survived blood and Scourge, and was purged, and was here now, able to see the Dawn.

* * *

The sun was starting to descend in the West before the three of them finally made their way to the outskirts of the city. The Glaives stationed in the city offered a place to stay with them when they checked in at the makeshift headquarters, but the company of others didn’t feel right. Everyone was celebrating the return of the Sun, and the three companions couldn’t bear it, in their grief. 

They made camp in an empty lot near the edge of the city, in the shadow of the stone base of the Wall. There, Gladio set out the camping gear (one chair short) and Ignis prepared a simple meal of rice and beans. 

And then… then came the test. 

Ignis served up three portions, and brought them, two in one hand and one in the other, to where he could hear Gladio and Prompto’s hushed discussion. “May I… interest you in some food?” he asked. 

Gladio huffed a response and one of the plates left Ignis’s right hand. Gladio started eating right away. 

Prompto grew still. 

Ignis waited, patiently, and was soon rewarded; a second plate left his hand. Instead of waiting for Prompto’s response, Ignis sought his own chair, and sat to tuck into his own meal. 

The campsite sounds dwindled to the clicking of their cutlery on the camping plates. Soon there was a snuffling sound from Prompto’s direction.

“You okay, Blondie?” Gladio said softly. 

Prompto sniffed. “It’s… delicious,” he said, his voice thick with tears. 

Ignis exhaled, a long sigh. “Thank the Astrals,” he murmured.

“It worked, huh,” Gladio said softly.

“If it was caused by the Scourge, I had hoped…” Ignis said, then trailed off.

More sounds of cutlery from Prompto’s direction -- shoveling more food in his mouth, if Ignis were to guess -- and then Prompto cleared his throat. “It was a Scourge thing,” he said, muffled with food and emotion. “So now the Scourge is gone, it… kinda went away. I guess.” 

Gladio grunted. “You turned into a vampire, and then it just… went away?” 

Ignis smiled against the sudden tightness in his throat. “A last gift from Noctis,” he said. “I hope you use it well.”

“You’d better believe it,” Prompto mumbled wetly. 

There were more sounds of contented eating. Then Prompto cleared his throat again. “Thanks, guys -- thanks for not giving up on me. Even when I’d given up on myself.” 

Ignis reached out a hand. Prompto’s small (normal again) fingers clasped around his palm, a tight, trembling grip. Then Gladio’s vast hand engulfed both of theirs and squeezed. “We’re glad you made it,” Gladio said.

“The Dawn wouldn’t be the same without you,” Ignis said.

Prompto squeezed tighter, and all of them fell silent, appreciating the feel of the setting sun on their backs.


End file.
